Speeches by Western.

“Just to pick up on that, it is great to hear that the Secretary of State is obsessed about energy prices. We had a series of business roundtables across the country and businesses, irrespective of their size, are really concerned about energy prices, but also are clearly concerned by the increase in national insurance …”

“Just briefly, what systems do we use across Government for procurement and finance? Do you use SAP-based systems? Is it similar to that? Is it standardised?”

“I call the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee.”

“I call Alex Sobel to wind up.”

“Martin McElwain, do you have any comments from the legal perspective?”

“This is maybe one for you, Catherine, given your previous role. It is around Estonia. When Estonia was attacked, what happened? I am trying to think of the timings and whether it was a member of NATO at the time. What actions did it take across Government and society, so the whole-of-society approach? How did it go abo…”

“On the point of the private sector, so the attacks on Marks & Spencer that I think you were referring to earlier, would Estonia and its whole-of-society approach be likely to have been more resilient to such attacks?”

“Catherine was talking about agility in Estonia. Do you think that we have that agility across Departments?”

“The events of recent weeks around British Steel highlighted that there are all sorts of challenges in a Government. I am talking about silo working and the need to work collaboratively across Departments. It was evident that there could have been differences of opinion, maybe in the past when the deal with Jingye happe…”

“Do you think a Chinese-owned nuclear power station would have been a good idea?”

“I am interested. We were talking about British Steel in the previous session, but touched on nuclear power stations as well. To what extent do you think the Government are good in working across Government Departments to assist with or promote these sorts of opportunities, but also in ensuring that these investments ar…”

“Can you illustrate that with which Departments?”

“Mike Reid, do you have any comments?”

“Can I just ask one further question to that? That is about dual use technologies. How good are we, or are these Departments, in identifying or recognising there could be a dual use to a new technology, in your experience, Mr Reid?”

“Yes.”

“It was about disruption. As we have just seen in the last 10 days or so, there has been significant disruption. That has actually had a huge cost in terms of share price.”

“A few years ago, there was that attack on TalkTalk. I think that the headline was more about data and how much data was stolen from TalkTalk. Do your clients view this still as an issue about data, or are they viewing this as, “What is the potential disruption of any such attack?””

“Regarding Marks & Spencer, that was not a state threat, but let us say that it was. They would be very capable of doing something like that. Do you think that there should be an awareness given to food supply as a critical infrastructure?”

“Helen, do you have any other views, maybe linked to share price manipulation or other questionable activity that state actors might play a part in?”

“It is striking, is it not? There was stuff about the rumours of attacks, threats or planned assassination of senior executives in a particular German defence company. Do you think that that is a real thing that is understood in this country?”